RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/11/video_amazing_israeli_women_saved_a_community.html

When you suddenly get innumerable emails from people wanting you to see the same story, you know it’s an important one. In this case, it’s the story of the young women who, with three tanks, fought a 17-hour-long furious battle against Hamas terrorists, saving an entire community through their actions. Their triumph is an important counterpoint to the women who were ignored in the lead-up to the October 7 attack. Some are blaming sexism, but I have another theory.

The tank battle took place at Yated, a community that sits near the Egyptian and Gaza borders at the southernmost end of the Gaza Strip. This video shows the women explaining how they responded to the attack and what they did. They are matter of fact, saying that they were completely focused on the task at hand, which was to fight the terrorists swarming into Israel:

It’s worth noting that, even as the women are getting the respect they deserve for their impressive military feat, there is a story emerging that part of the reason Israel was caught unprepared was that commanders ignored warnings from female “spotters,” many of whom died on October 7, saying that they saw unusual Hamas activity along the border.

The current narrative is that this failure resulted from command sexism. That’s possible. Israel is the most enlightened country in the Middle East, with full women’s rights and innumerable strong women. Still, many people in Israel are the descendants of the approximately 900,000 Jews expelled from Arab lands after Israel’s creation. Unlike the Zionist Europeans who moved to Israel before and after the modern state’s creation, all of whom were very modern in their attitudes towards women, these emigrants came from conservative countries and might have reflected those values and passed them to their children.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hamas-holds-everyone-hostage-war-gaza-israel-biden-truce-694318db?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The civilized world is rejoicing at the release of hostages by Hamas, especially the sight of young children reunited with parents after seven weeks of hell. But that relief shouldn’t blind us to the way the jihadists are manipulating human sentiment to achieve their terrorist aims.

The killers are releasing a dozen or so hostages each day in return for three times the number of Palestinians released by Israel. Hamas snatched innocent Israelis and others in a deliberate act of terror. The released Palestinians were arrested or convicted of crimes under the law.

Now Hamas is using the hostages to play on Western respect for human life. Hamas knows its strategy is dividing Israeli opinion between those who prioritize the release of the hostages and those who want Hamas defeated so it can never again slaughter 1,200 people.

Hamas is also manipulating the world, including the Biden Administration. President Biden said Sunday he hopes the initial four-day military truce can be extended so more hostages will be released. That includes the unknown number of Americans held in who-knows-what condition underground. Hamas released the first U.S. hostage on Sunday, a 4-year-old American-Israeli girl, Abigail Edan, whose parents were murdered in front of her.

But every day the truce lasts the more time the jihadists have to regroup, slip out of Gaza, rearm, or plan more ambushes against Israelis. And the longer it lasts the more odds increase of an extended cease-fire, which is what Hamas really wants. The onus will fall on Israel to end the truce, though Hamas is unlikely ever to release all hostages, who are its only source of leverage.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-give-gaza-to-the-palestinian-authority-terrorism-anti-semitism-israel-fatah-68aa2ba8?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

The Biden administration wants Israel to bring in Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party to rule Gaza when the war is over. Fatah controls the Palestinian Authority, which governs much of the West Bank. Uniting Gaza and the West Bank under a common government is a necessary step in the Biden administration’s seemingly unshakable goal of creating a Palestinian state sandwiching Israel.

The idea behind the strategy has a long history. Fatah is a secular, Arab nationalist party that occasionally claims to want peace with Israel, albeit on terms that would make Israel’s existence as a Jewish state untenable. Yet for many diplomats this makes it an attractive alternative to the terrorists who perpetrated the Oct. 7 attacks. But Fatah is a junior-varsity version of Hamas. Both have lethal policies when it comes to Israel. The Palestinian Authority sponsors the “pay to slay” salary program that provides financial rewards to terrorists, who get more lavish payouts for crimes that result in longer imprisonment. As recently as Oct. 2, an official Palestinian Authority TV broadcast showed Mr. Abbas saying: “Our martyrs, prisoners and wounded are the most sanctified that we have. . . . Our martyrs have a right to this money.”

Fatah has celebrated and glorified the Oct. 7 orgy of torture and murder. The party has boasted that its members directly participated in the invasion, crossing into Israel and brutalizing civilians. A video shown on a West Bank-based Telegram channel that has been repeatedly cited by official Fatah sources shows terrorists with the yellow headbands of Fatah’s Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade firing Kalashnikovs while assaulting an Israeli kibbutz. One terrorist proclaims, “Today we broke in the military post Nahal Oz [a civilian kibbutz] and we hit what we hit.” The terrorists brag that they “stepped on their heads,” and shows footage of them stomping a dead Israeli.

Other videos on Fatah channels boast of their participation, proclaiming that Fatah is “fighting with the rest of the resistance groups in ‘the Al Aqsa Flood’ battle,” using Hamas’s operational name for the massacre. On Oct. 7, death notices appeared on Telegram announcing the funerals (or “weddings,” as they put it) of Fatah members who died that morning in the attack on Israel.